Introduction to Part I

The three decades from the 1990s to the 2010s have been a period of fundamental reform of key political institutions in Japan. Significant changes were then made to all three branches of government: the electoral system for Diet members, the administrative system, and the judicial system. In 1994, an electoral reform was implemented that introduced a single-member constituency system for the House of Representatives. This reform was aimed at increasing political competition between political parties and achieving a two-party system. Since the 1990s, reforms of the administrative system have been implemented at both national and local levels. At the national level, the 2001 reorganization of government ministries sought to transform the previously over-compartmentalized administrative structure into a more efficient one. In addition, various measures have strengthened the authority of the Cabinet and the Prime Minister’s Office, including the establishment of the Cabinet Office in 2001 and the Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs in 2014. The reform of the judiciary, which began in 1999, led to the establishment of law schools in 2004, the introduction of the lay judge (saiban’in) system in 2009, and other fundamental changes.